Jimmy crack corn (Cobb Bob) and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn (Cobb Bob) and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn (Cobb Bob) and I don't care, because the master's gone a way.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446320/

"The End Of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream"
Everyone go watch this movie. it has a strong bias, but it gets its point across.

See my post to EnormousJuan. Really, the best thing is to read the link I posted above. Here, I'll post it again: Algae

It's a relatively short article. You can read it in 10 minutes.

In short, though, the algae they use is 50% oil. It grows in salt water (that means we just use ocean water - don't even have to purify). It grows very quickly. The cost to get the project up and running is estimated to be about three times what we spend on crude oil in a year. It requires about 1/50th of the amount of land that we currently use as farm land, but we don't have to use land that's fertile in the classic sense - really we just need a bunch of shallow pools to grow it in. You feed it sunlight and agricultural waste products (killing another nasty bird with the same stone). The main problem I have heard they are having is finding a reliable way to harvest the algae easily. This blows my mind. Surely if we can put a man on the farking moon, we can figure out a reliable way to scrape pond scum out of a concrete trench...

I stopped buying Shell products back in the SA apartheid days when they wouldn't boycott like some of the other oil companies did. Don't think I'll be changing my mind soon. BTW, to add to the 'evil oil company' list, don't forget PetroCanada

Ubergrendle:China is nearing the total energy consumption of the US, and will quickly pass it once their middle class is unleashed.

That's ok, the US middle class is disappearing fast enough to make room for 'em.

/just sayin'

Cows are grown using plants (fertilizers in the plants) and water (pumped out of the ground or purified using oil-based machines).


Ethanol is only cheap because it is a open system. That is, not all the energy is accounted for. Money goes in to keep it cheap. Now, if the whole planet had to run on ethanol, there would be no subsidies, nothing to keep it cheap. It would be a closed-system. The earth is a closed system, so pockets of positive energy growth are drowned in the sea of energy-sinks.


Seriously, show me a windmill that can generate enough power to completely build another windmil. A feedback loop if you will. 'Cause I see thermodynamics sucking energy at every step in the way. Show me a solar cell that can produce all the energy required to make another solar cell. Think biosphere, except for electricity. I don't see it yet.

TT_TT_P:

I would assume that Corn Cob Bob was trying to represent Ethenol, which is an almost totally useless way to create energy. It is also not emmission-free.

um did u miss the day in class when they tought you about non renewable resources and renewable resources?
Corn = Renewable, Oil = Nonrenewable

Yeah ok dumbass. Both are renewable. Neither can be replenished fast enough to meet our needs, hence both will be useless when we don't already have a massive stockpile premade for us.

Perhaps we should be migrating away from internal combustion engines, which only turn about 20% of the fuel energy into engine output(The Efficiency of The Internal Combustion Engine). Internal combustion engines are used because they're cheap and the fuel is cheap. Now that the one really cheap source of fuel for these engines is getting more expensive to get out of the ground, we ought to look into something entirely different from the blowing-stuff-up-in-cylinders concept. Either another form of direct chemical to mechanical energy conversion, or a less direct method such as batteries and electric motors.

Realistically, the unwashed masses (that includes the rich snobes too, in fact it includes anyone besides green party voters. just kidding) who only care about their own generation will not settle for a truly sustainable future. They want plane flights, the intenet, refrigerators, washers, water cleaned and pumped out of their faucets, homes built for cheap using tools such as bulldozers, air-hammers, and cement trucks, all while still having one car per driver. In short, people don't want to change their lifestyles. Unless a series of politicians with balls get into office, they won't have to. We've got enough fossil fuel and nuclear fuel to make all the electricity we want, so it's a simple matter of replacing the gasoline burning engines with batteries and electric motors. Batteries include hydrogen fuel cells. Basically, instead of refueling with liquid, you'd refuel with electrons.

I'll leave it to someone else to do the math on our remaining coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves to see how long we can keep those power plants going. The only thing I can do myself is save a little myself and try to convince others to do the same, and hope that eventually 51% of the voters get the message and elect a responsible leader.

/always gotta leave it at George W. Bush's doorstep

Why all the hate on the oil companies? If they didn't exist we wouldn't be having this discussion (no computers) and you would be biking to work.

/tongue-in-cheek

Technoblake:

I disagree. Ethanol is a subsidized energy largly due to political promises made to corn farmers in Iowa. Shell has made no attempt that I know of to kill hybrid cars and they pour tons of money into R&D for hydrogen power.


Absolutely. I lived in Nebraska as a kid and farmers would get into fistfights over what was called Gasahol. It would fark up carbuerators and valves, so some farmers refused to use it, and they'd get shouted at at the Co-Op for hating America. My uncle ran it, knew it was stupid and took more energy to make than it created, but it was expected of him, and every other farmer or rancher to run it.

Ethanol is nothing but welfare for farmers.

Nu-cu-lar. But we'll wait until the hippies are begging for it.

I'm wondering about everybody's opinions on this:

1. Do you think, if peak oil happens sooner rather than later (it will certainly happen eventually), will we be able to compensate without the economy and modern society completely melting down?

2. Do you think it will be sooner or later? In five years, or fifty (or five hundred I suppose)?

EnormousJuan:

I don't think we should rely on a plant to replace oil. Instead of emptying underground oil chambers, we would be destroying our farmlands.

Wow, good thinking! OK everyone, get ready for really expensive oil, really rich oil companies and no plan B!

Unless a series of politicians with balls get into office, they won't have to.

That's the thing: Politicians get into office on a wave of money. The real money comes from corporations. Candidates who don't pledge comfort to corporations (even if they don't do it openly - Many candidates call for tobacco restrictions and energy reform, but still take money from tobacco and oil companies) don't get money, and they don't get elected. Changing corporate corruption will take politicians with balls, but politicians with balls will take a change in corporate corruption to get into office. Short of a widespread social breakdown in most of the developed world, we're not going to fix our energy problems until it's too late. Again.

ObeliskToucher

If it's that easy, go buy 15,625 square miles (!) of land someplace where land is cheap and start growing that algae.

If I had the kind of money necessary, I would. However, it should be clear that this is a government-scale project.


You'll be a zillionaire. Don't forget the biowaste disposal permits for the unrefinable bits of algae that your processor leaves behind... not to mention the nasty, smelly processing plant that'll cook the algae down into fuel.

Yes - because I am sure the waste products from this would be worse than the pollution produced from refining petroleum.

Let's see. I can take your word for this or the word of people with PhDs in fuel research... Hmmm... Tough decision.

If you know it's not that easy (and I never said it was easy - just that it is our best current alternative) then please, by all means, show your proof. I am waiting with baited breath.

If we spent half - no make that a tenth - what we had spent blowing up Iraq researching algae I am willing to bet that we could have a very good working model plant to start building.

from link: "140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel are needed a year"

Wow. Hey, anyone know how many billions of gallons of biodiesel we make now? Anyone? Buler? Do we make ONE billion gallons?

Do we have a strategic biodiesel reserve?

Oil is $60 a barrel. It is the cheapest energy source at the moment. In a few years when oil hits $100 - $200 a barrel, then we may see alternatives popping up.


Nothing global will ever happen until it's economical, simple as that. Market forces will usher the age of "biodiesel" and nothing else. No single man, law, country, or company will.

Perhaps they banninated this 'mascot' because of the stupidity of it. It's absolutely asinine to think that corn-derived ethanol can replace even 1% of our petrofuels use.

Corn is merely a stupidly inefficient way to get energy from the sun into a portable form.

Not to mention that ethanol still produces CO and CO2, contributing to global warming.

Not to mention that ethanol has a much smaller energy density than gasoline and (according to the DOE) the LOWEST energy return on investment of all common energy sources excluding oil shale, which is to say that corn is better than trying to refine the equivalent of driveway sealer into high-octane gasoline..

Nevermind that in order to provide even 10% of the United States' petrofuel energy needs, we would have to plow under all of the plains states and devote them to growing corn, while polluting the environment with millions of kilos of pesticides and wasting billions of gallons of water.

Solar-produced hydrogen and fuel cells is where it's at, and Shell annually dumps hundreds of millions USD into solar and fuel cell research annually. Biodiesel and ethanol are merely a tiny stopgap in the overall energy problem.

Let's look at how much power is generated per square kilometer for solar > hydrogen > fuel cells versus ethanol.

Ethanol = 8.65GJ/km^2/year = 274J/s/km^2 = 274 Watts/km^2.
Solar power into hydrogen at 20% efficiency = solar flux of 1358W/m^2 * 20% solar conversion * 40% fuel cell conversion efficiency in a vehicle * 1e6m^2/km^2 = 10.8MW/km^2!!!

Damn, I didn't know that ethanol was that stupidly bad. These numbers mean that on face, ethanol and biodiesel are FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES WORSE at converting solar energy into moving vehicles. That doesn't sound very Green to me! I would have thrown this idiotic mascot out on his corncobby ass!

/owns $15K of Shell stock, because of its large R&D expenditure and large reserves

Shell, like all sane and reasoned people, has figured out that ethanol is a lose and is making it a point to call them on it.

ethanol is just agribusiness politics.

Geotpf

I'm wondering about everybody's opinions on this:

1. Do you think, if peak oil happens sooner rather than later (it will certainly happen eventually), will we be able to compensate without the economy and modern society completely melting down?

2. Do you think it will be sooner or later? In five years, or fifty (or five hundred I suppose)?


Let me answer by saying that I formerly to think survivalists were a bunch of nuts - the operative word being formerly.

I have had geologists I trust tell me that there is not immediate end to oil in sight - just an end to really cheap oil. However, with the amount of our economy that rides on cheap transportation, and with China looming, I am concerned. Let's just say that I am glad that I own 135 acres of farm land and that I will be stocking said land with food, guns, and, well, some of this algae if I can get it over the next decade. I am 30, and I fully expect to see the end, or at least vast subsidance, of reliance on petroleum in my lifetime.

A Shell spokesperson said the company's arrangement with organizers meant it had exclusive rights when it came to fuel products.


Hmmm...standard sponsorship agreement. It would have been the same thing if someone came in with other oil products. Of course the conspiracy theory knee jerk nuts won't actually think before spewing.

mistergecko: Basically, instead of refueling with liquid, you'd refuel with electrons.

Pray tell, how did you get those free electrons? Did you just pump them out of the ground? The last I heard, it took energy to free dem boys. Electrons don't like runnin' off on their own. Well, not billions of them at a time, that is.

My family has boycotted Shell for over 15 years now. I even ruined an engine once keeping it and I don't regret it for one second. I would rather spend $900 on a new engine than buy 2 quarts of oil from Shell.

Does anyone have links to any oil vs. ethanol research and not just hearsay?

Yellowbeard-Peak oil doesn't mean we run out of oil. It, by definition, means we run out of cheap oil, as the supply stays steady or decreases and demand increase. I guess my questions are, if gas costs ten or twenty or fifty bucks a gallon in five or ten years, does society melt down? And what is the likelyhood of this happening?

Major Thomb: The article states, "Corn Cob Bob is the front man for the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a not-for-profit group that promotes clean energy."

I don't think that an advocacy group actually produces fuel. Shell was in the wrong. It would be like Coke having a booth from the U.S. Dairy Council thrown out (the council itself produces nothing, it only advocates). But perhaps we can harvest energy from your own rampant knee-jerking. :)

ObeliskToucher

I have nothing against nuclear, and would be glad to see more nuclear plants go online. However, nuclear only produces one energy product: electricity. That being the case, you have a huge chicken and egg problem to get over in the transportation energy, and that is that everyone must make a switch to EV. As you surely know, there are major problems (probably number 1 being battery life) with EVs.

Biodiesel offers a reasonably cheap (those nuc plants you want are going to be more expensive I would bet) alternative that utilizes existing transportation technology. Further, biodiesel production itself is easily dispersable throughout the populace. That is, while not just anyone can be a biodiesel producer, far more can be than can run nuclear power stations. And, oh by the way, nuclear waste is just a sconch worse and harder to dispose of than algae corpses.

Technoblake

Ethenol... is an almost totally useless way to create energy.

Why? Does it cost almost as much energy to produce it as you get back from it?

ferrocene
The earth is a closed system, so pockets of positive energy growth are drowned in the sea of energy-sinks.


Seriously, show me a windmill that can generate enough power to completely build another windmil. A feedback loop if you will. 'Cause I see thermodynamics sucking energy at every step in the way. Show me a solar cell that can produce all the energy required to make another solar cell. Think biosphere, except for electricity. I don't see it yet.

Eh? sorry, I'm tired so if I'm missing your point..

But calling the earth a closed system and then referencing wind and solar power, both of which are influenced by energy coming from outside the earth, into it seems like a bad idea.

Furthermore, you could build a windmill that would produce enough energy to build another windmill. The windmill isn't the source of the energy, it's merely a method of harnessing it. It's not as though the second windmill is going to deplete all the energy of all the wind of the earth in its construction. Nor would building your second solar cell use up the sun. You can't get energy from nothing, but that's not really coming into play in those examples... The sun and the wind are really really big batteries.

that map with all the shell oil stations next to the mcdonalds is kind of funny when you realize we could be running cars on left over veggie oil (that they use in deep fat fryers of fast food joints).

Much as I hate to say it ferrocene is on the correct track. The Earth and it's sun are a closed system. Entropy always increases. And humanity will do what all organic life forms eventually do; that is use up all the available, usable energy and die in a mass extinction. Population curves are exponential and we humans sit on the curve now.

Fatalism sucks but there you go.

Geotpf

yes - I know what it means. I didn't mean to imply that we would be out. I meant we would be out of really cheap oil. That doesn't even mean that we will run out of pretty cheap oil (who knows what technological processes are around the corner). With our economic reliance on transportation (and because of that, on cheap oil) I am really worried about a meltdown. What I would forsee would be something like a rapid economic collapse followed by a resource war. That's why I was talking about survival techniques. I think that, unless we find an alternative, we are far more likely to kill each other over the world's remaining oil supplies (see "Operation Enduring Freedom") than we are to actually run out. Nuking the world's major oil supplies (or what's left of them) to keep them out of the hands of enemies is also an option.

the point of this is that the corn cob guy [who is an idiotic mascot, IMHO] fronts for a non-profit organization promoting an alternative fuel, and they were kicked out 'cos shell objected. they aren't competition - if they were a business selling ethanol or biodiesel they'd be competition - because they can't make money. the key to the story is shell's statement that they had exclusive rights when it came to fuel products - but they SELL fuel products, whereas the CRFA promotes ethanol and biodiesel. doesn't matter how useless the products they promote are, they are promoting the idea of alternative energy. if shell is in on the game of getting into alternatives, they should welcome a diversity of ideas because it will lead to greater innovations in the industry and thus to greater profits. or so i'm led to believe by free-market proponents.

There are two related, but seperate issues here.

One is fuel to power vehicles.

One is fuel to run power plants.

Oil based products power 99% of the former and maybe 1% of the latter. Most people group the two.

That is, assuming we run out of oil, driving anywhere is going to cost a lot, but powering your lights and refrigerator and computer and air conditioning won't go up (much). Well, until peak coal and peak natural gas, that is.

fifthofzen
And humanity will do what all organic life forms eventually do; that is use up all the available, usable energy and die in a mass extinction.

While it is true that mass extinctions have wiped out a great number of life forms, it's certainly not true of all of them, and pretty much never because they used up all the available energy. Usually it is associated with a cataclysm significantly altering environmental conditions, which may involve there being less available energy, but not none.

fifthofzen

1. The earth and the sun are not a closed system. For an example of a truly closed system, please see "the universe."

2. You are right sort of in assuming that we are not going to get energy (realistically) from anywhere but the sun (well, there's nuclear, but there's only so much reactant on/in the planet). However, I assure you, the sun is, for all practical purposes, an unlimited power source for humans on earth for the forseeable future.

3. I think ferrocene's point is that when you add up all the energy it takes to make a windmill, it seldom works out that any particular windmill actually produces enough energy over it's lifetime to have actually paid for itself (or, if so, it only pays for itself by a very small margin). I don't know if he is correct or not, but I think that was his point. I believe the same can currently be said about solar. While this does not mean we should cease looking into these as alternatives, it does indicate that we can't realistically think about switching to them in the immediate future.

Yellowbeard-The problem with going to war over oil is that it doesn't work-Iraq proved this. If it worked, the price of oil would have gone down, not up. Oh, and nuking the oil supply would be an amazingly stupid idea.

Yellowbeard
3. I think ferrocene's point is that when you add up all the energy it takes to make a windmill, it seldom works out that any particular windmill actually produces enough energy over it's lifetime to have actually paid for itself

Yeah I can see that, I was thinking in terms of absolutes, but it is true that currently our efficiency in harnessing either source of energy is crap. But that is something we can potentially improve at least over time.

Will poop become the preferred, renewable nergy source in the post-oil world? Because there's alot of it to be found here at fark.

So yeah, it's not a good time to buy a new car, but the gears of industry aren't exactly about to come to a screeching halt

Shoot. I just bought a new car.

G2V
Should not have used the term mass extiction. That would refer to multiple species. I was thinking of closed systems and singele species extintion. Too much generaliztion, sorry.

Yellowbeard
For the purpose of mankind the universe seems a little broad. We can barely get men to the moon or probes to the reaches of the solar system. I was thinking more of the engineering problems associated with generating/producing the energy required for an ever expanding population. As with G2V, sorry for the over braod generalization.

G2V

Usually it is associated with a cataclysm significantly altering environmental conditions, which may involve there being less available energy, but not none.


Correlation does not indicate causation. While some extinctions are correlated with cataclysmic events, I think there is much room for debate on the actual cause of mass extinctions. (Read, I don't buy the asteroid impact theory. I might, however, be convinced by vulanism as a possibility).

Big corporations scream for free market until someone
tries to come into their sacred territory.
They they cry and whine and want protection or govt. handouts.

We all know cold-fusion is the way to go.

I mean Dr. Emma Russell is already working on that as I type. She has the near complete formula hidden in her cleavage. I think Simon Templar is going to help her.

/obscure movie reference

from what i've gleaned about peak oil theory, we're probably headed for a recession at best and a depression at worst. i don't think we'll have the massive end-of-the-world scenario some people like to paint. at some point, oil will get so expensive that it will tip the markets into a recession, what with the price of all consumer goods going up as well.

What's society going to be like when unleaded hits $5/gallon? $10/gallon? There's going to be a lot more have-nots all of the sudden. It's going to hit the poorer classes more than the wealthy. Fuel costs of 50% of your available income to commute to work would be undoable.

I can see a time where we start getting paid in energy credits.

sdtangler

Paid in energy credits so you can continue getting to work.

Sing it with me now "You load 16 tons, whaddaya get? 'nother day older and deeper in debt..."

What, no Cornholio jokes yet?

/Drives a gas-electric hybrid